Arcstrider
by clood9
Summary: Sequel to 'Gunslinger'. A Hunter walks a path between the Light and Dark. A Huntress searches for her mentor, abandoning her duty as a Guardian. A scientist makes a deal with the Darkness, and loses his mind. The Hive's God of War encroaches through Talon, and the universe is thrown into chaos. A hero must step into the breach once more, let go of the past and find balance within.
1. Guardians of a New Age

**Had this idea floating around.**

* * *

A Hunter sits on the side of a bed, one that isn't his own. He looks behind himself, and there is a body covered under a thin layer of blankets soundly sleeping next to him. He sighs, and his hands glides down her figure, from the shoulder to her waist.

He smiles sadly. "Cass," he says, giving her a light tug. "Come on Cass, get up."

Cass stirs, mumbling to no one. She groans, then yawns. Her arms stretch upwards, the back of her hands landing on the back of the bed frame. She lets them hang there for a few seconds, before returning them to the sides of her body. She sits herself up, and softly smiles.

A radiant little thing, she is, although the weird chitinous growth around her arms is something to watch out for.

"Hey Russell," she dreamily replies, pushing away strands of her luscious rose-red hair from her field of vision, and letting it messily flow from there. "What'd you wake me up for?"

"I think's in been an hour, so…I just wanted to say goodbye," Russell replies, then sighs, looking down towards his lap.

Cass scoots up next to him and wraps her arm around his shoulders. "Oh…I get how you feel, Russ," she says, into his neck. He shuts his eyes and takes a sharp intake of air.

"I'm ready, you can send me back now," he affirms.

She giggles in response. "Please don't make me feel bad," she says, patting him on the back. "I can spare about five more minutes if you're really that desperate."

His head descends onto her lap, gently landing on the side. "Please do." He curls up, and holds his feet close to the back of his thighs.

"I've been meaning to ask, how has…everything been, for the past few months?" She asks, rubbing his rough, short hair. It's a bit dull, but keeps enough vibrancy in it to convince people that he hasn't been an isolated recluse for a while now.

"Everything's alright...I guess," Russell says, shifting his body so he can find the best spot between her thighs. "People are movin' on, living their lives."

"I should re-iterate my question," she says. "How have _you_ been?"

"Fine."

She hums, clearly unsatisfied by his answer. "Russell, please don't lie to me."

"Am I that bad at lying?" He snorts, and the short-lived joy he gets from his joke dies down.

"I can see through you every time, Russ," she affirms, and massages his scalp with her fingers. "…If there's anything you need to talk about, I'm here."

He sighs. "I miss you, Cass, I just wish you would come with me, back in the real world."

She stops, and there is a spike in the air's tension. "Russell, you know I can't do that, they all think I'm dead. It's probably best for it to stay that way."

Russell sniffles, and wipes a tear from his eye. "Will you at least consider it?"

She pauses, and she bites her inner cheek. "…Maybe." She pats his shoulder. "For now, let's focus on something else, hm?"

"I guess…" He sits himself up, and yawns. There is a moment of silence, broken by an uncontrolled spark of Arc Light accidentally coming from his fingers. He jumps at the sight, then shudders, as he now feels all tingly in his hand.

"Oh? You've adopted Arc Light?" Cass asks, then smirks as she stands up with a whirl of blankets that spread all around the room. "Come on, show me!" She excitedly says as her hand grabs his and pulls him up.

"It's not that good, I'll just hurt myself," he mutters in reply, crossing one arm over his torso to hold the other. He shyly looks down.

"And do you think I care how good it is?" She snaps, before pushing Russell to an open spot in front of the bed, big enough for them to have a decent spar in. "Well, come on!" She cracks her knuckles and raises her fists.

He gulps, before letting the white-blue energy course through his body. A pair of Liar's Handshake gauntlets appear on his arms, and he steps back with his non-dominant foot, then holds his fists as high as his head.

Cass attacks first by throwing a punch to his arm, successfully making contact with his stomach. He feels his right arm get charged and throws one twice as hard back, sending her backwards, and nearly to the floor. The wooden flooring creaks underneath their combined weight.

Russell presses the attack and lunges forward, rolling to the right and attempting to strike her from behind. He gets parried and punched in the chin, sending his head looking to the roof, before getting hit in the stomach.

He grunts and clutches his stomach, intent on calling a timeout. Instead, she prepares a roundhouse kick.

"Wait-" He tries to back away, but her foot makes contact with his cheek, sending him soaring to the side.

He also didn't account for time, and is teleported back to his apartment in The Tower mid-air, while unfortunately still in momentum. He slams against a sky-blue wall.

"Well, guess who's back?" A Ghost asks, his tone indicating annoyance. "You've been gone an extra five minutes."

"Jingles, come on, you see me right now?" He falls onto his bed and groans.

"I'm gonna puke…" Russell wheezes out mid-coughs.

Jingles sighs, and shakes his single, glowing lime-green eye. His standard light-grey shell angrily glides mid-air as he scans his Guardian. "You've been hit in the head! What happened!?"

"I prefer not to talk about it…" Russell replies, rolling himself to his back and clutching his stomach. He groans again, gagging with his mouth shut.

"Like all the other times?" Jingles snarks, scoffing afterwards. He floats above, and shoots a few rays of Light to his friend. "Russell, you can't keep doing this without telling me, I'm worried!"

"I know, but I'm fine-ow!" Russell accidentally shocks himself with Arc energy. "God, I hate this shit! Why am I even using it in the first place!?"

He sits himself up, and hits his chest, coughing a few times. His feet make contact with the cold floor, and he recoils them back in reaction, then tries again, braving the unpleasant feeling. After racking his brain together, he stands up, and exhales.

"Alright, time to get the day going," he says, shoving past his Ghost. The little Light turns to him and sighs, before following.

/

A petite, and energetic Brit speeds past and circles around a Scorn Chieftain who tries to track her but only dizzies itself as a result. She occasionally goes close to it and whispers taunts.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" She says from behind, before smacking it in its hard metal helmet and blinking away. It turns around and screeches, wildly firing its massive blaster that fires bouncing blue pellets all over the place. A flail makes contact with the creature's side, cracking its shield and sending it tumbling.

A well-built Swede swings her rocket flail once more, then activates the barrier shield on her arm to bash it in the face, stunning it for a moment and knocking it back before sending it flying with a strike thanks to a long-range extension of her main weapon.

The Chieftain's body bashes against a wall, and it slumps to the floor with a dying cry.

"Nice one, Brigitte!" Brigitte smirks and holds her flail over her shoulder. She gives the dead Scorn a light kick, to make sure it won't give any nasty surprises when they aren't looking.

"Thanks for distracting it, Lena!" She nods towards her partner, Lena, then wipes her brow of sweat. "I think we should be good for this sector."

"Ugh, these Scorn are everywhere," Lena pouts, and rolls her eyes. "Ugly as bollocks, too."

"I kind of feel bad for them, they don't know what they're doing," Brigitte says, tucking her flail to her waist and crossing her arms. "I heard they're made from dead Fallen."

"Ew, let's get a move on, I wanna get to base by sunset!" Lena says, excitedly as she zips forward, towards their next objective.

"Slow down! This armor doesn't help with the heat!" Brigitte replies as she starts following, wiping off any leftover sweat from their previous fight from her face.

"Overwatch-Actual to Sweep-Two, status report." Overwatch's current standing Strike Commander says over her comms. "Do I have to get down there? Heard this temperature's breakin' records."

"We should be fine, we'll be back soon," she replies, as she readies her flail once more, upon hearing the battle cry of a Scorn and faint bursts from Lena's akimbo energy pistols. "Engaging! I'll get back to you!"

She runs after her partner, pushing through the ruined medieval city of Eichenwalde. The city lays mostly abandoned and decaying, as it has been for centuries. A memento of the old world, and the location of a famous last stand in the Omnic Crisis.

Brigitte finds her teammate and throws herself into the battle with her trusty flail as she takes down a multitude of lower-tier enemies with ease.

Lena blinks between, underneath and over the Scorn, her blue trails weaving together forming a nice little circle before disappearing a second later. She throws a baseball-sized bomb into a small group, backing away right after and giggling as she sees corpses fly about.

There is a sharp buzz behind the two as a woman with whitish-blue electricity crackling from her body slams onto the floor with a staff. The air turns noticeably charged as she swings around her pole, shocking and destroying Scorn with ease.

Brigitte backs away as a spark nearly singes a strand of her auburn hair, and ducks as a Chieftain's body shoots over her head.

A minute or so later, the entire area is clear. A bitter, burnt smell is dominant, and there is electric energy sparking from every single corpse.

"No problem," the woman says, her staff disappearing from her hand. She stands straight, and dusts off her purple trench coat. "Pretty neat, eh?"

"Sombra! Didn't think you would be around here!" Lena says, rushing up to Sombra and giving her a tight hug, before blinking backwards. "That was amazing!"

"Thanks, I didn't expect you two to be in this area," Sombra replies, holding a hand at her hip and leaning to the side by bending one of her legs. "I should get going now." A white and red SMG materializes in her hand, and she pulls the slide back, letting a shell eject.

"Ciao," she says, doing a closing gesture with her other hand and going invisible. There are barely audible footsteps that eventually become inaudible.

"Hard to think she was working with Talon!" Lena huffs, and looks at the spot Sombra used to occupy. "Completely changed! Like she doesn't even remember her past self!"

Brigitte shrugs, and exhales. "I'm not complaining. I'm starving, let's get a move on."

/

A doctor walks through a hallway, one arm propping a tablet up for her to see, the other swiping and pinching on its screen. She huffs, and looks forward, holding the device at her side.

A man nods at her, leaning against a door, one that leads to Overwatch's medical archives. She sighs, scowls, then flashes her ID card at the scanner next to it.

"Russell," she says, crossing her arms. "The amount of time you spend in here is…alarming, to say the least. Operations are reporting that something is causing a power surge in this wing every other night."

Russell scoffs. "Angela, if you want to want to watch what I'm doing, then go ahead, don't say I didn't warn you though." He cracks his neck.

"But why here, though?" Angela turns around when she hears very light footfalls behind her. A cyborg ninja stands there, giving a short bow once they make eye contact. "Genji!"

"Angela," Genji casually replies. "I did not expect you to…participate."

"…What?" She asks, folding the tablet and crossing her arms. "What do you two do down here?"

He hums. "Has he not told you? I've been aiding him practice his skills with a staff."

She turns to Russell, who shrugs. "An _electric _staff?"

"It's an Arc staff."

"I'm sorry, an _Arc _staff."

She doesn't understand why he is being so pedantic about this.

"Anyways, do you want to watch, or not?" He snaps, which never ceases to send shivers down her spine. She doesn't like his new attitude, following the death of that Taken Queen, or whatever they called it. He enters the empty and spacious chamber, only populated by a few metal boxes on the walls connected with cables that flow in neat, straight lines into the roof.

She leans on a wall, one that is opposite to the half of the room Genji and Russell occupy. Once she sees the former unsheathe his sword, her hand quickly takes out the tablet again and has the transmission code for a medical response team dialed in.

Genji leans forward, lunging with one leg as his sword trails behind, the very tip barely hovering above the floor.

Russell takes a loud breath through his nose, then exhales slowly through a small straw-sized hole made with his lips. "Alright…let's do this." He starts sparking, illuminating the room with a blinding a light. An electric staff materializes in his hands from out of thin air, and the sound of electric buzzing makes its way to her ears.

Angela inches herself backwards, more into the wall behind her, and wishes that she can somehow phase through. She yelps as a fragment of energy nearly hits her, before scooting along the side, towards the entrance.

The two participants in the fight twirl within their small battle ground, occasionally hitting each other with their respective weapons.

Russell fights with a certain roughness, which reminds her a bit of Gabe. She shakes her head at the thought, and concentrates. He seems to prioritize fast, and powerful strikes with his staff, rolling away whenever he doesn't have the opportunity to swing.

He parries a slash, and presses forward, flicking his enemy's head upwards with an upwards push from his weapon, and rolls _into_ the semi-robot ninja, his intent clearly to push them down.

Genji steps backwards, and jumps, stepping on Russell's back mid-roll, making him fall. He makes some distance and stands cautiously as he waits for his opponent to stand back up. Despite Angela's dislike for combat, she has to admit, he does have a certain grace in battle, which she appreciates. He starts slowly side-stepping, his sword flat at head-level, pointed towards Russell. He catches him off-guard by deflecting what seemed to be a particularly powerful downwards smash, making the man stumble backwards.

Genji pushes into him, but Russell rudely kicks his sword to the side, and draws a massive hand cannon from his waist. A mostly sleek, but roughed up in many spots, firearm. Angela remembers that he calls it the 'Ace of Spades', she figures it's due to the white spade symbol on the side, just in front of the cylinder. He points the barrel at the ninja's head.

"Russell." Genji pushes the gun away. Russell's electric glow fades, returning him to his regular state. "You make the same mistake every time."

"Is it really a mistake if I win using it?" Russell snaps back, tucking the weapon away in his waist.

"This is not a spar, Russell." Genji stands back up, and dusts off his knees. "You must be patient."

"Well sorry I'm on a tight schedule!"

/

A shadow stalks a dead city, eliminating anything that stands in her path. She pulls the slide of her Recluse SMG after slapping in a fresh magazine, loading her weapon. Her lips curl to a small smirk as she sees the small firearm start faintly glowing.

She mows through the leaderless Taken like a Golden Gun through a haystack. They drop like flies and disappear back into the nothingness they originate from. She hears the screech of a Scorn near a dark alleyway and takes out her Anarchy grenade launcher, planting two mines at both walls, linking them together with a faint blue tether.

A few Scorn Ravagers pass through and dissipate as they're electrified to absolute oblivion. She fires another grenade into the dark passage, and chuckles as one of them seems to have stuck on an enemy, as indicated by the snapping sound of Arc energy pummeling a poor _puta_ to death. There is a pained scream, then nothing.

"What'd you think of that, Xiao?" She grins and turns around, expecting her mentor to be there behind her. Her expression drops as she sees no one there, then sighs as she remembers what happened. "Right, you're…not here."

She sniffles and scratches the side of her nostrils, before painstakingly gulping and tucking her heavy weapon away.

She sits down and leans her back on a wall. "Why would you do that, Xiao?" She chokes out, and then she buries her face into her hands, sobbing into her palms. "I thought we were…friends, what did I do wrong?"

She shakily exhales, and steels herself.

It must have been a mission gone wrong, Xiao would never do something like that to her, especially after being partners for so long.

She brings out her Ghost. "Take me to orbit," she says.

/

_Years earlier…_

A scientist drifts into a never-ending void, a dark and feeling of perpetual dread overcomes him as he tries to gather his bearings, and rationalize what's happening to him in a scientific, factual manner.

He looks down at the lower half of his body, a buttoned-up, but somewhat torn white lab coat covered his legs. He looks forward towards the darkness in front of him.

His mind races, and he feels a cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He hears a whisper in his right ear, and turns to its source, only to find nothing.

"What…what is happening!?" He screams out, hearing his own voice's echo taunt him. Another whisper, this time in the other ear. He turns left, and doesn't see anything. "What have I done!?"

The whispers grow louder in volume, and quantity. Multiple voices speak to him of power.

There is a flash, and he is returned to the real world.

Every single object that isn't bolted down is flying towards the ceiling. When he drops his arms, they all fall.

"**Go…discover the meaning of **_**true**_** power.**" A whisper says.

"**The answer to the universe is at your fingertips, show the world your great discovery.**" Another says.

The scientist clutches his head and starts incomprehensibly yelling to try to drown out the voices in his head.

There is the banging of the side of a fist on the window of a door in front of him. A fellow scientist is yelling, muffled through the thick glass.


	2. Torch Among the Shadows

Russell sits at his desk, in this over-the-top, extremely expensive leather chair that can spin around as if it's on ice. He sighs, readjusts his posture, and nearly blinds himself on the hard-light screen in front of him.

"Why did they have to choose sky-blue? Seems counterproductive for eye strain…" he mutters, blinking a few times and increasing the ambient light. He rubs his eyes, and squints to read the tiny letters on workstation.

"Maybe you should turn the lights on a bit more, working in the dark isn't good for the eyes." He jumps and draws the Ace of Spades in the direction of the voice in a dark corner of his office. "Saves you some surprises."

He lowers his weapon upon seeing the familiar purple hue from Sombra's trench coat.

"Sombra," he says, leaning back and sighing in relief. "Good to see you. What do you nee-"

"You know what I'm asking for," Sombra says, curtly. She crosses her arms and steps forward, regarding him with a hopeful gaze, as if he's about to give her good news. "I'm talking about Xiao, any updates on her search?"

"Sombra…" Russell takes a deep breath and steels himself. "Nothing new from last week. Edgar wasn't able to locate anything other those traces of Void Light, I'm sorry but I have to-"

Sombra visibly deflates, and scowls. "Don't you even dare try and close the search."

"I don't want to, Sombra, but I'm getting railed by the UN Security Council and the media about this, we have to give them some form of conclusion to this." Russell leans forward, using one elbow to prop himself up as he hides his eyes behind the curve between his thumb and index speaker. He sighs, and looks back up, to Sombra. "That's all I can say. We don't know where Xiao is, she's disappeared, gone. Chances of finding her are slim. If we can even find a dead body-"

"Don't say that! She's alive, I know it!" Sombra pleads, tears welling up in her eyes. Black streaks start forming down her cheeks. "She wouldn't abandon us after so much!"

"I know, it's not like her to abandon friends like that, not that she hasn't done it before but…" Russell cocks his head to the side.

"She's done this before!?" She asks, incredulous.

"Only to pursue something more important," he pauses. "Tell you what, find me something that Xiao definitely would go after over everything else, and I'll open the search again."

"Who said we were closing it in the first place!?"

"I did, and I don't want to hear another word about it unless it's definite proof she hasn't been captured but…er, deserted." Russell raises an eyebrow and relaxes himself on the back of his chair.

"Fine." Sombra nearly spits, and he sees her fist clench before she turns around and disappears.

Jingles materializes in front of him. "You know, she is right, we shouldn't abandon Xiao like that." He says, floating over to be at the center of Russell's vision.

"I know she is, that's why it hurts so much to do this, I'm hoping she finds something," Russell says, putting his left elbow on an armrest and leaning his head into his hand.

"She tried bugging your office, but I stopped her," Jingles says, and a small black square with a single blue light blinking at the center materializes on Russell's desk.

"Of course, she showed up before I did." Russell chuckles, and sits himself straight, before getting back to work on all this bureaucracy stuff.

It only takes a few minutes for him to get tired of it. "Man, I really need to get out of this place."

"I don't think that's a very good idea, Russell," Jingles says, in his matter-of-fact voice, which is just half condescension and half sarcasm. "Man, you're really sounding a lot like Cayde."

"Yeah, why can't you be my Sundance?" Russell chuckles, and turns off the screen, before lounging back. He stretches his arms, and reaches for a non-existent coffee mug, suddenly getting one as Jingles transmats one into his hand.

"Please, that's what got her killed," the Ghost says, rolling his eye. A new shell materializes on him, it being a single ring buoy that sticks under the ball part of his frame. "What's this? Russell, change it back, this is inappropriate!"

Russell giggles as he looks at his floating Ghost fly around frantically, in a vain attempt to convince him to change his shell.

"You look perfectly fine," Russell says, waving Jingles off and suppressing some giggles. "Besides, who cares?"

"The Guardian that's standing in your office!"

"What?"

Russell looks to his front, and sees a Hunter that's a few feet taller than the sitting desk in full dark-red Bladesmith's Memory armor standing there, their arms crossed behind their back, standing tall and proud.

They give him a short nod, and their Ghost materializes next to their head, sporting a grey Generalist Shell with several marks all over it.

The Hunter signs something to him, then pops of their helmet. There's an exhale as the woman reveals herself. Her almond, slightly wide pupils go up and down, scanning him, before settling for eye contact.

"She's saying hello, and that your Ghost looks just fine," the Ghost says, his voice a bit on the higher end of the vocal spectrum and full of cheer.

"You're not helping my case!" Jingles says from behind Russell's neck.

"We've been assigned to this Earth, and we've been told to report to the field commander, which is you."

"Alright, uh, give me a second to find you guys something to do…sorry I'm not like Sloane…" Russell turns on the screen again and scrolls down a list of ongoing operations. "Okay, um…does an undercover operation to find a rogue Talon medic interest you? You'll be escorting Doctor Ziegler to find this guy called 'Baptiste.'"

The woman looks to her Ghost, shrugs then turns back to Russell and nods.

"She's up for that," the Ghost says, his shell rocking up and down. "Her name's Maya, by the way."

"Well, nice to meet you Maya, I'll see you on the field." Russell does a small finger salute before sending the woman on her way.

Jingle emerges from behind his neck. "Do you know who you just talked to?"

"No?" Russell answers, resting his head back. "Who is she supposed to be?"

"You don't recognize her!? She's the one who broke into the Vault of Glass, killed Crota, then Oryx, single-handedly stopped the SIVA crisis, and legends say that her Gjallarhorn is so enhanced with Light that a Taken Knight tried to touch it and instantly got vaporized, she also saved us all during the Red-"

Russell waves him off. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, she's the hero, but what is she doing here? Unlike the Vanguard to assign people like her to secondary sectors, like this sad, sad place."

"…I don't know, and it's weird that we haven't gotten any formal notice of it."

"Well, you did get formal notice of how good looking your new shell is."

"It's horrible, change it!"

/

_Mess hall._

Lena skips her way through the masses of hungry soldiers with her somewhat small tray of food, headed for the exit to join her fellow operatives outside, only stopping when she notices a woman in armor in a similar style to Russell's sitting alone, save for her Ghost. It's eagerly conversing with her, only getting silent nods and shrugs in return.

She decides that Overwatch gossip can wait for a day and proceeds to sit across the woman.

The Ghost does a full 180 degree turn and scans her in the span of a blink of the eye.

"Hello!" It says, very cheerfully at that. It's voice has the same timbre and tonality of a certain voice actor that seems to slip Lena's mind at the moment, but she can remember it, since it's everywhere for some reason. "I'm Ghost, and this is Maya!"

Ghost turns to it's Guardian and nudges it in the shoulder. "Come on, introduce yourself!" It whisper-screams.

Maya rolls her eyes and drops her fork, then starts gesturing with her hands.

Lena distinctly recognizes it as American Sign Language.

"_Nice to meet you,_" Maya communicates. "_Like Ghost said, I'm Maya, and as you can tell, I'm a Guardian._"

"_Nice! What are you assigned for?_" Lena signs back, giggling to herself like a schoolgirl because of the novelty of the situation.

"Er…official Vanguard business, not for everyone, yet," Ghost cuts in, and takes a quick glance to its Guardian. "We'll be assisting you guys over the course of a few months in order to…peace keep…and restore order…yeah."

"_So you're not entirely sure, yet?_" Lena signs back. Maya shrugs and grips her fork, twirling it inside the mush that's considered food in this place. "_I won't pry, it's probably super important!_" She grins.

"Heh heh, yeah…really…important," Ghost says, a hint of fluster in its voice. "Anyways, we have some things to attend to, it was nice to meet you!"

Maya and Ghost stand up and quickly disappear amidst the other soldiers that are present.

Sombra appears beside Lena a second later. The latter nearly jumps out of her seat.

"Sombra! What're you doing?" Lena asks, as she scoots a bit to the side to make a bit of space. "Were you eavesdropping on us?"

"Not really eavesdropping, but…convenient overhearing," Sombra replies, coolly as she kicks her feet up on the seats at the other side of the table and relaxes her back, being supported by one of those hard projections Guardians so often use in their weird antics. "So, you think she's been sent here to help us with finding Xiao?"

"Sombra…I dunno, the case's already closed, doubt they would send someone new to open it wide open again," Lena says, clearing her throat afterwards. "Seems pretty odd to reopen like this, blimey I don't think Russell believes the reason he's givin' out but-"

She stops herself. "Huh…Sombra you might be onto something!"

"Well, let's go!"

/

_International Space Station, Years earlier…_

The scientist gasps as he is brought back into reality. His head snaps to both sides, evaluating his surroundings. He takes another sharp intake of air and he falls to the floor, alongside everything else in the small laboratory he's occupying.

Everything is silent, and he can hear the universe sing for him; Silent whispers that whittle away as his consciousness returns to him.

It's so, so beautiful.

He finds himself on his arms and knees, his breath shaky and his mind a tornado of thoughts and emotions. Once the song disappears, he ponders for a small moment, about what this discovery can mean. He doesn't know, yet.

He does know one thing, though.

The end is coming, and that he is destined to be the one to welcome it. He remembers the end-bringer's clear beauty, and his heart aches for another chance to see her. Oh, how he enjoyed seeing her bring her blade down on inferior species, and he hopes to have another chance to witness it once more.

He hears the whispers again, but his attention is taken by the door to his laboratory being brought down by a battering ram and several security guards rushing in, their weapons raised and pointed at him. He starts cackling at the futility of it all, before they all start floating, then they suddenly slam to the floor. The sound of bones crunching and their pained screams floods his ears.

"I'm…exhausted, assistant…bring me…"

Something smashes against the back of his head.

_Detention Center OW-2, a year later…_

The scientist fakes his slumber, merely shutting his eyes in order to fool the two guards in his room. Imbeciles don't even recognize such a simple façade, pathetic.

"Damn, you're a lucky guy, assigned to this dumbass," one guard says. "Is he usually asleep all the time?"

There is an exasperated exhale. "No, usually rambling about the universe and swords. Pretty sure the latter is an allegory for Darwinism, or something like that."

"Swords?"

"Something about everyone being a sword, and to sharpen your own you have to kill others. Also mentioned something about the end of the universe, and how he's gonna bring it."

The other guard laughs. "What? Guy's a nutjob!"

"Shame, I was a real fan of his work in physics, he was brilliant. Whatever happened in the ISS fucked with him real bad," the first guard sighs. "Anyways, I'm off to get some lunch, keep an eye on him, will you?"

The scientist clenches his fist.

"Whoa, what the fuck is happening? You see that cup there-aw shit!" The scientist lets go, and there is a shattering sound as something made out of ceramic breaks on his right. "God damnit, get me some towels on the way back." Another annoyed sigh.

There is some indistinguishable chatter from the now-lone guard's radio device, then a blaring alarm.

In the distance, the cracks of gunfire sound through the thick concrete walls.

"Ah, fuck, requesting backup on subject Sigma's cell!"

/

"This should be it…unless I misconfigured? Can't be." Cassandra fiddles with the device strapped around her chest, smacking the small window that contains the Vex Radiolaria inside, and smiles in satisfaction as the white liquid violent sloshes inside. "Perfect, it works."

"_OW Detention Center to all active units, we have a code-black situation! HVT-Sigma has-_" The radio chatter fizzles as gunfire and explosions overtake the operator's voice.

"_Backup alert has been terminated, proceeding with extraction,_" another voice says. This one sounds much more relaxed, probably the Talon soldiers.

A sleek black ship materializes from thin air in the sky, and descends towards the Overwatch Detention Center, a main hatch door slowly dropping downwards.

Cassandra pulls the slide of her _Beloved_ sniper rifle and crouches down, quickly zooming into the numerous Talon soldiers that are evacuating with a bound man in a medical bed in tow.

Seems to be around a dozen.

"Shouldn't be too hard…" she mumbles to herself, licking her lips once before setting her crosshairs on a soldier, and pulls the trigger soon after.

One man down. Everyone else reacts by taking cover behind road blocks and small pieces of crumbled building.

Cassandra turns her attention to another ship rapidly approaching. It bears bright orange and blue colors.

_Overwatch, damnit, _she thinks, huffing in frustration as she looks back towards the Talon agents, who are rapidly evacuating with their prize.

"I better get out of here before she sees me," she says, and her head twitches in reaction to a bullet whizzing dangerously close to her face. She squints and notices a sniper on the Talon ship.

The sniper rifle's glare catches her eye as she blinks away from another round.

Cassandra presses a few buttons on her Vex contraption, and disappears with a faint white flash.

* * *

**This was really hard to push out, holy shit.**


End file.
